


The Soft Sell

by sinverguenza



Category: Breakfast Club (1985)
Genre: F/M, Het
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-11
Updated: 2011-02-11
Packaged: 2017-11-14 14:12:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/516063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinverguenza/pseuds/sinverguenza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven more times with Bender and Claire</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Soft Sell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kathrynthegreat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathrynthegreat/gifts).



> All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
> 
> Originally written in 2011, migrating some of my fic over here. For my homegirl kathrynthegreat, who requested "bender/claire, one more time" over at 80sand90sfanfic. I had to do seven times, though, because I'm long-winded.

\--------

1) That Monday, nothing is different.

She feels bad for Brian, the only one who thought it would be.

She stares straight ahead when she passes Bender in the hall. 

 

2) Prom Night. Senior Year. Bender shows up, predictably, in his big old coat. She notices that it is ratty on the bottom. More than usual. 

He stays out in the parking lot, with his friends. They are too disdainful to buy tickets. She can see him through the windows of the gymnasium, see his lip curling as he watches the decked-out pretty things go in and out of the door. 

Then Prince’s _Kiss_ comes on, and Brad grabs her hand. They dance, and Claire won’t let herself think of other kisses.

As her group heads for the limo, for the motel rooms and vodka, they are heckled in a typical fashion by the burnouts.

She notices that he doesn’t say a word, just stands there, tight-lipped, and Claire feels like she’s failed at something.

In the limo, she stares at the corsage on her wrist. The elastic is too tight, and she hates lilies. They remind her of dead things.

 

3) College is fine. She likes being on her own, likes the way that her parents still finance her lifestyle so long as she brings home good grades. She doesn’t tell her friends that the credit card is in her dad’s name. 

She’s a sophomore at Lake Forest. Her parents didn’t want her too far away. She brings Brenda home for Christmas, her roommate. Brenda is leggy and tanned, from New Orleans. She laughs at the way Claire keeps her shoes organized.

Brenda insists that she needs a beer. Claire takes her to Culpepper’s, one of her old high school haunts.

“Which one of these has your name on it?” Brenda is laughing at the names carved into the wooden booths, at who loves who and who has big tits and the words FUCK FUCK FUCK, scorched deep into the knotted pine.

“I didn’t come here much,” Claire lies. She was here every Friday at least.

Brenda sucks soda through her straw. “Funny how every town has one of these. The teenage mecca. What bullshit.”

Claire agrees. Lots of bullshit. Bullshit all over the place.

She thinks she sees him as they leave, leaning up against some greasy motorcycle, but she dismisses it. Could have been any other burnout loser. Like she could even tell them apart.

She hopes he left this town a long time ago. 

 

4) This is not her first gallery opening in downtown Chicago. Claire has turned her art history degree into a lucrative position, still the princess…only this time she’s ruling over the Chi-town art scene. 

She circles, working the crowd from the outside in. Dealers, hangers on, people with cash to burn. Art is cool again, and she’s glad to be there with a bid slip and some breezy conversation. She is a competent, self-sufficient adult, and somehow she’s still planning prom.

She keeps an eye on the wine bottles and does that fake smile that feels more and more real as the years go by. She doesn’t have to beg it forward anymore. It just comes. People say her name, and it automatically appears, before she even knows who is speaking.

“Claire.” She hears Marcus, her boss, calling her. 

So she’s already wearing that smile when she’s introduced to Cal Gladdis, a rather feminine impressionist. He is wearing a silk coat. Claire doesn’t care for his stuff, but that doesn’t matter. She places her hand in his, and Cal sort of holds it, like he doesn’t know what to do with it.

Standing next to Cal is John Bender.

“This is John, a friend,” says Cal, as he drops her hand. 

“Nice to meet you,” she says, and offers her hand to him too. Bender’s hands are warm. She squeezes his hand, just a bit, willing his fingers to lose the limpness, hoping that he won’t refuse her in front of all these people, after all these years. 

Finally, Bender returns the handshake and looks away. It’s so impersonal that later she wonders if it was really him at all.

 

5) Her life in Illinois is over. There’s no particular reason for this. She’s just outgrown it.

Claire has been in L.A. for almost five years now. It suits her. It’s warm, plenty of sushi, far from her parents and the ghostly memory of the girl she used to be. She’s 28, has a tiny place in Venice. She likes the eclectic community.

She sees girls on the boardwalk, 16 year old girls with too much lip gloss and their belly buttons peeking out from their baby shirts. She sees the way they laugh, so open, so unrestrained. She sees the way they talk, their faces animated, their voices loud and pitchy. She can’t believe that she was ever that way, but she knows she was.

Claire doesn’t regret those times. She doesn’t miss them either.

Her car needs a new transmission. She has to drive into Pasadena for it.

Bender gives her the receipt.

“God,” is all she says at first.

“Hey,” he says, easily enough. His hair is short. His hands are reasonably clean, though she can see oil under his finger nails. He watches her look. When she looks back at him, she waits for the snarl, for the accusation of _money_ , something that he made her feel ashamed of for years.

But there’s none of that. Just his steady brown eyes, and a weird little curl in his lip.

“How long have you been in L.A.?” he asks.

“Five years. You?” And they’re having a conversation. She hadn’t expected it to be this easy.

“Almost one. Five years, huh? You’re like a native now.”

“Hardly.” She runs her fingers through her hair. It is long and loose. And then she gives him this smile – her real smile. It’s a little shy. She feels just as vulnerable as ever, but she knows that he can’t make her cry anymore. 

He’s just staring at her. He doesn’t smile back. 

Her smile leaves. She braces herself for an insult, a sneer and a snarky comment.

Instead, he hands her back her credit card. The card with her name on it. Her only card. 

“You look good,” he says simply. Not like a lecher or a creep. He says it like a guy, like a guy she hasn’t seen for eight years.

She’s shaking her head. “John Bender. You fucker.”

 

6) They end up at his apartment much later. She’s a little tipsy from the sake. She teased him endlessly when he ordered a spider roll.

“Did you take your piercing out?” She says this as she’s tonguing his neck.

“Yeah. Still have it though.” His hands are under her shirt, resting just lightly on her waist. He’s not pushing her. After the door to his apartment shut, she was the one who pressed her body against his and licked the corners of her mouth.

“Piercing?” she asks.

“No….uuhn.” He does this groan-grunt that makes her smile. Claire’s got her hand down the front of his jeans. “No, your damn earring. Your diamond earring that I wanted to sell a million times but didn’t.”

“Aww. How cute.”

“You laugh, but I think you should be more impressed.” His hands, rough and large and warm, push up over her breasts. He’s not very artful at this, not trying to seduce her or be smooth. She likes that.

“I thought you sold it a long time ago,” she says, as she dives into his mouth again.

He pulls away from her abruptly. “You thought I sold it?”

She sees the old Bender now, that angry high school boy, daring her to explain him, to have the audacity to understand him. So she backpedals, doesn’t want to fight him. “Hey, I’m glad you didn’t. I just…thought that it didn’t matter to you.”

“Just because I didn’t yell poetry up to your balcony? I may look dumb, but I ain’t that stupid. You were the Shermer princess, and I was this big fuckup.”

She shakes her head. “Don’t say that. None of that matters.”

And then he really surprises her, _shocks_ her. 

He says, “I know.” And then he kisses her, hard, pulling her face toward his with the back of his hand. 

 

7) She’s putting away his clean socks one afternoon, when she finds a tight roll of red fabric at the back of the drawer. 

They don’t talk about it much, because all of that was a lifetime ago. It happened to different people who only vaguely resemble the John and Claire of now. But she can almost feel the frozen grass beneath her feet, feel the pulsing warmth of his neck under her lips when she shakes out his scarf.

Inside, wrapped in a white handkerchief, is her diamond.

She’s glad. They have tickets for the Hollywood Bowl tonight, and she’d like to wear them. Together. Paired. The way they were meant to be from the beginning.

_/end_


End file.
